Our Church wisely has configured Holy Mass around the breaking of bread and drinking of wine—Body and Blood—as Jesus instructed at the Last Supper.

We might also meditate, upon receiving Communion, about another major occurrence: when the Apostles ate with the Lord after He had risen.

Long before Easter, it’s worth contemplation, even daily.

One finds it in Acts 10:40-41: “This man God raised [on] the third day and granted that He be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead.”

The Apostles didn’t only eat with Him at the Last Supper. They shared bread, wine, and who knows what other nourishment when He was in resurrected form—as we resurrect with Him during Communion.

This is said because we must bring Mass alive. We have to make Catholicism an in-the-moment experience, as He intended. We teach, respect, and recognize—but should not be solely preoccupied with—the past.

This is what the modern Church, in dry catechesis, often lacks: a sense of the miraculous, a this-moment elevation of the soul, daily intimacy, as if at table with the Lord of all things natural and supernatural and all day clinging to and accompanying Him.

For when He is next to us—not just behind a statue, painting, or Crucifix, though those certainly have their important role—we relate to Him all day every day. We start and end the day with Him. We converse with Him as Savior, guide, and friend.

We dine with Him, personally.

And we spread the charism that comes with that closeness.

“He commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that He is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead,” says Acts 10: 42-43. “To Him all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in Him will receive forgiveness of sins through His Name.”

[resources: Secrets of the Eucharist]